Tiger v Phil in Las Vegas: A gaudy dust-up between millionaires

By Oliver Brown

24 August 2018 — 11:14am

Images of Elvis Presley's years in Las Vegas, a city where he performed 837 shows, are tinged as much by sadness as nostalgia. Rhinestone-studded jumpsuits, an ever-expanding waistline, an increasingly slurred delivery: it all adds up to a portrait of an artist in steep decline.

It is why the autumn of any sunlit musical career is now traditionally called the "Vegas period", a moment when the headline acts finally accept they have started the long slide for home.

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are heading for Vegas.Credit:AP

We had dared to believe that if anybody in sport could resist the Vegas caricature, it was Tiger Woods. At 42, he has scotched every theory about his waning powers, contending for victory at the last two majors. Surely, the blandishments of Sin City could wait. And yet in a deal confounding any notion of sense or taste, Woods has agreed to a $US9 million ($12 million), winner-takes-all skins game with Phil Mickelson in the Nevada desert at Thanksgiving. Why not a round $10 million? Well, that would antagonise the PGA Tour, by equalling the bounty on offer each year to the winner of the FedEx Cup. Such are the lofty principles at play here.

This Woods-Mickelson showdown is golf's equivalent of a Donald Trump stump speech, so gaudy and riddled with wrongs that it feels almost beyond satirising. Still, let us unpack a few fallacies about the contest at the outset.

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First, the November duel is officially being sold as a high-stakes scenario, such is the fortune on the line. It is the Ryder Cup singles squared, or so we are told. Except that pressure is all relative: Woods is worth $1 billion, at a conservative estimate, Mickelson $512 million, and they are competing for somebody else's money.

As Lee Trevino, who grew up so poor that he had to pick cotton aged five to contribute to the family finances, once put it: "Try playing a hustler for $50 when you've only got $10 in your pocket. That's pressure."

Then, there is the curious timing. To put it kindly, Tiger versus Phil 2018 is a confrontation happening about a decade too late. While Woods has astounded detractors with his resurgence since spinal fusion surgery, he is not the same player who won the Vardon Trophy, awarded for the lowest annual scoring average, nine times in 14 years.

The pair shake hands at the Players Championship this year.Credit:AP

At his zenith, Woods was not just supreme on major championship Sundays, but consistent to a degree no golfer has been before or since, making an unprecedented 142 consecutive cuts.

Mickelson, as to be expected for a man two years away from seniors eligibility, is also a diminished force. True, he won a World Golf Championship at 47, but he is no longer the free-swinging show-stopper who won the 2010 Masters by hitting a six-iron across Rae's Creek from the pine straw.

One constant in Mickelson's life, though, is gambling. His Tuesday money rounds during practice are embedded in tour folklore. On one occasion, he tricked Nick Watney into paying off a wager in pounds rather than dollars. On another, he bet a spectator - and lost - that he could get up and down from an especially sticky lie. Even on the set of Tin Cup, he accepted a £1000 challenge to hit a ball almost vertically over a tree.

A low point came when he was embroiled in an insider trading case, only for him to avoid prosecution on a legal technicality last year. The head-to-head with Woods is thus a natural extension of his voracious appetite to make a quick buck.

But perhaps the most galling element of this face-off is the sheer disingenuousness, the pretence that Woods against Mickelson marks the consummation of some historic rivalry.

In reality, they were rarely direct on-course adversaries. While Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson battled ferociously at both Augusta and Turnberry in 1977, not to mention Pebble Beach at the 1982 US Open, the two Vegas protagonists found that their paths seldom crossed.

Woods had won eight of his 14 major titles by the time Mickelson secured his first of five, in 2004, and the pair never mustered any defining Sunday scrap. They were brought together by Hal Sutton, the US Ryder Cup captain at Oakland Hills 14 years ago, but duly lost both matches on the opening day.

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Any froideur between them was borne largely of their diametrically opposed personalities: Woods the dead-eyed assassin, Mickelson the gawky, grinning prankster.

One story from 2009 captures this to perfection. With Mickelson's wife, Amy, recently diagnosed with breast cancer, Woods is understood to have sent a text to his rival that read: "Hopefully they will soon find a cure." To which Mickelson allegedly replied: "Yes, thanks for that. And hopefully they'll soon find a cure for your hook."

Now that the two have a match to sell, they are doing their trash-talking in public. The results, so far have been robotic at best. "I bet you think this is the easiest $9m you'll ever make," Mickelson wrote on his newly-minted Twitter account. "Think you will earn some bragging rights?" Woods shot back. "Let's do this," came the response.

Each is trying to repair his image with some contrived badinage. Mickelson, in particular, needs a PR fillip after his meltdown at Shinnecock Hills, where he produced a controversial hockey shot to stop his ball rolling off the green.

This Vegas dust-up, however, is the type of vulgar ostentation that both of them should be above.